Switches and hubs are definitely not the same. Any traffic sent to a hub is broadcasted to every computer connected regardless of whether or not they requested it or not. This can make a VERY congested network when you are doing high traffic tasks like transferring files or multiplayer gaming over your LAN.
Switches offer much better network performance then hubs. A switch inspects each packet and uses a MAC Address table stored in the switch to determine exactly what device the traffic goes to.
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